B2MEM 2011 Day Twenty-two, Refugees: In This Far Land Beneath the Trees
Today's Challenge: Refugee issues are our issues; their plight is our plight. Write a story or poem or create artwork that illustrates the situation of some displaced group in Middle-earth.
Apologies for having let the author's notes end up longer than the piece! This one would come after Day Sixteen:
In This Far Land Beneath the Trees
“When first our people began to dock at Alqualondë…” Oropher shakes his head. “Bewildered, excited, fearful - had they reached their eternal home, or returned two Ages to the Deep-Elves’ domination?”
His grandson grimaces. “So said many of my Ithilien folk, when I told them I must sail…”
“So Námo persuaded me the time was finally come to leave Mandos; that though I had once captained so many of my subjects to their deaths, now I should lead them in life. West of the Pelóri the forests are vast, and fair. Will you join us there?”
Legolas smiles. “One day. Not yet.”
~~~
Deep-Elves: the Noldor.
Appendix B to the History of Galadriel and Celeborn in Unfinished Tales, "The Sindarin Princes of the Silvan Elves" makes fairly clear that Oropher and the Silvan Elves moved into northern Mirkwood in the Second Age partly because Oropher was unhappy about the growing power of the Dwarves in Moria, and partly to escape Galadriel and Celeborn’s domination of Lothlórien.
“though I had once captained so many of our folk to their deaths…” Oropher led the Silvan Elves’ contingent at the Battle of Dagorlad before the gates of Mordor in II 3434. According to the same section of Unfinished Tales: “Oropher was slain in the first assault upon Mordor, rushing forward at the head of his most doughty warriors before Gil-galad had given the signal to advance. Thranduil his son survived, but when the war ended and Sauron was slain (as it seemed) he led back home barely a third of the army that had marched to war." My personal hunch is that guilt over those losses, and his personal part in perhaps making them greater than they might have been, may have kept Oropher in Mandos for more than an Age.
The idea that, when large numbers of the Sindarin Elves of the Greenwood finally begin to arrive in Aman, they might (given potential overcrowding east of the Pelóri) settle in woodland further West, to have some space away from all those pesky Noldor, was borrowed from curiouswombat .
Apologies for having let the author's notes end up longer than the piece! This one would come after Day Sixteen:
In This Far Land Beneath the Trees
“When first our people began to dock at Alqualondë…” Oropher shakes his head. “Bewildered, excited, fearful - had they reached their eternal home, or returned two Ages to the Deep-Elves’ domination?”
His grandson grimaces. “So said many of my Ithilien folk, when I told them I must sail…”
“So Námo persuaded me the time was finally come to leave Mandos; that though I had once captained so many of my subjects to their deaths, now I should lead them in life. West of the Pelóri the forests are vast, and fair. Will you join us there?”
Legolas smiles. “One day. Not yet.”
~~~
Deep-Elves: the Noldor.
Appendix B to the History of Galadriel and Celeborn in Unfinished Tales, "The Sindarin Princes of the Silvan Elves" makes fairly clear that Oropher and the Silvan Elves moved into northern Mirkwood in the Second Age partly because Oropher was unhappy about the growing power of the Dwarves in Moria, and partly to escape Galadriel and Celeborn’s domination of Lothlórien.
“though I had once captained so many of our folk to their deaths…” Oropher led the Silvan Elves’ contingent at the Battle of Dagorlad before the gates of Mordor in II 3434. According to the same section of Unfinished Tales: “Oropher was slain in the first assault upon Mordor, rushing forward at the head of his most doughty warriors before Gil-galad had given the signal to advance. Thranduil his son survived, but when the war ended and Sauron was slain (as it seemed) he led back home barely a third of the army that had marched to war." My personal hunch is that guilt over those losses, and his personal part in perhaps making them greater than they might have been, may have kept Oropher in Mandos for more than an Age.
The idea that, when large numbers of the Sindarin Elves of the Greenwood finally begin to arrive in Aman, they might (given potential overcrowding east of the Pelóri) settle in woodland further West, to have some space away from all those pesky Noldor, was borrowed from curiouswombat .